ARTIST BIO:
Davon McMillian (b. 1990, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Los Angeles, California. His practice centers on painting, printmaking and drawing, with a focus on portraiture and figuration as a way to explore behavioral, cognitive, and psychodynamic perspectives. He received his BA in Studio Arts from California State University, Chico in 2020, following a year studying language and culture in Japan.
Before transitioning fully into his practice, McMillian spent over a decade (2014–2024) working as a commercial designer in retail and fashion, an experience that sharpened his eye for design, and cultural trends.
ARTIST STATEMENT (c. 2025):
Identity functions as an archive, a fluid series of choices and a spectrum of experiences as opposed to a revelation or reflection of who a person is in that moment. It is a chronicle of events often masked off by the adaptations we construct to protect ourselves like walls of encryptions protecting the data within. The Black experience is a particularly layered archive, threaded with trauma, triumph, and historical context, and it’s one I return to often in my work as a product of and response to it.
Through mark-making I weave narratives around figures and portraits, treating them not as singular likenesses but as a series of accounts, often exploring moments of isolation, self actualization, and trauma through the human form. My process spans digital and traditional materials, with a focus on symbolism, text, lighting, and the human figure. Each work begins with a question, often a moment in time that felt like a simple choice, but over time revealed itself as a framework for the persona.
I search for moments of feigned simplicity, where a momentary action or inaction fractures into a multiplicity of identities. Sometimes I show the impact, sometimes the catalyst, sometimes both, but always leaving space for the viewer to wonder what came before, after, or in-between. I challenge the idea of personality and identity as fixed forms, as the human experience is one that cannot be reduced to the present moment. The portrait and body, in my work, are not the result but the vessel, ornamented and deconstructed, carrying fragments of lives past lived and yet to come.